Doug Finke: Con-con advice

Still haven't made up your mind about whether to vote "yes" for Illinois to hold a constitutional convention? Maybe this will help you decide.

Doug Finke

Still haven't made up your mind about whether to vote "yes" for Illinois to hold a constitutional convention? Maybe this will help you decide.

Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH is against holding a convention. If you are inclined to follow the governor's wishes, that means you should vote "no."

Blagojevich's reasoning is pretty straightforward. He's afraid a constitutional convention will strip him of some of his powers, like the power to rewrite bills. That's what he did with the pay-to-play ethics bill. He used his rewrite powers to add a bunch of stuff to it that he said made the bill better. Pretty much everyone other than Blagojevich said he was really trying to kill it.

"Thank God that the constitution gives the executive branch a lot of power to get around the legislative branch," Blagojevich was quoted as saying.

Yeah, thank God, all right. Those powers are a major reason the state is in the mess it is. Blagojevich won't work with the legislature to get his agenda passed. When lawmakers don't pass his programs, Blagojevich tries to implement them by executive decree. Then we go to court. In the meantime, lawmakers dig in even deeper over who is really running the state. On and on it goes.

So by all means, if you want to help the governor continue to do a bang-up job, vote against a convention.

--Former Gov. JIM EDGAR is also against a convention. In recent TV ads, he repeats the mantra of the anti-convention folks -- the constitution is fine, it's the people running government that are the problem.

See, the solution is simple. Think, for example, that House Speaker MICHAEL MADIGAN, D-Chicago, is responsible for the gridlock? Just get rid of him. Oh, wait, you can't vote against Madigan unless you live in his district.

That's what is ridiculous about that anti-convention argument. There's no question the current crop of lawmakers has done a yeoman’s job of mucking up the proceedings. But there isn't going to be any wholesale change of faces in the General Assembly. Thanks to the constitution, legislative district boundaries are drawn to heavily favor one party or the other. Truly competitive districts are rare. The bottom line is that most of the people in the General Assembly will be back.

Moreover, most of the state’s current problems can be traced to the governor and four legislative leaders, who have a death grip on what does or doesn't get done. You get to vote for the governor, but you don't have any say in who gets elected House speaker or Senate president. The ones who do have a say are rank-and-file lawmakers, many of whom won their seats with financial help from their leaders. They aren’t going to turn on their benefactors

--Since 1988, it’s been a Halloween tradition in Springfield for kids to get candy from the governor. No more.

The Illinois Association of Candy and Tobacco Distributors cooked up the idea. The Executive Mansion was done up annually in spooky decorations, and long lines of kids would troop inside and get some treats. From Thompson to Edgar to GEORGE RYAN, the drill was the same, although Edgar one year moved the event to the Capitol.

"Then Blagojevich came aboard, and it kind of deteriorated a little bit," said association executive director BUD KELLEY.

For a couple of years, kids still went to the Mansion, but were not allowed inside. Then Blagojevich moved the event to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Although the previous governors -- or their spouses -- attended the trick-or-treat festivities, Blagojevich stopped showing up. After three years, the association had enough.

"Our board of directors wrote and said they wanted to take it in a different direction,” Kelley said.

The new direction was Secretary of State JESSE WHITE. This year, White's office decorated the Howlett Building, had staffers in costume and invited in the kids. White brought his tumbling team for entertainment.

"The kids just had a hell of a time," Kelley said.

An estimated 800 to 1,000 kids attended. Kelley said the association will do the event again next year with White.

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